Bangladesh and India: rivers, trade & connectivity

The transboundary river question

Bangladesh and India share 54 transboundary rivers, and water-sharing is the most enduring structural irritant in the relationship. The defining instrument is the Ganges Water Sharing Treaty of 12 December 1996, signed by Prime Ministers Sheikh Hasina and H.D. Deve Gowda for a 30-year term (expiring 2026). It governs the dry-season distribution of the Ganges at the Farakka Barrage, commissioned by India in 1975 about 18 km upstream of the Bangladesh border. The treaty's Annexure I fixes a sharing formula for the lean period of 1 January to 31 May: when flow at Farakka is 70,000 cusecs or less, India and Bangladesh each receive 50 percent; a guarantee clause assures Bangladesh 35,000 cusecs in alternating ten-day periods during the critical 1 March to 10 May window.

The Teesta deadlock

The Teesta River dispute remains unresolved. An interim sharing arrangement was negotiated and ready for signature during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Dhaka visit in September 2011, but it collapsed at the last moment owing to objections from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who controls the riparian state under India's federal structure. The proposed deal would have allotted Bangladesh roughly 37.5 percent and India 42.5 percent of the dry-season flow. The episode illustrates a recurring BCS theme: India's federalism means that state-level politics (West Bengal, Tripura, Assam) can veto bilateral agreements, complicating Dhaka's diplomacy.

Floods, the Tipaimukh question and the Joint Rivers Commission

Bangladesh, as the lower riparian on the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) basin—the world's second-largest river system by discharge—is acutely vulnerable to upstream withdrawal and to floods. The India-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission (JRC), established in 1972 under the framework of the friendship treaty, is the institutional mechanism for managing shared waters; it has met intermittently and was revived at the secretary level in 2022. Bangladesh has long voiced concern over India's proposed Tipaimukh hydroelectric dam on the Barak River in Manipur, fearing downstream impacts on the Surma and Kushiyara. In 2019 the two sides signed an MoU on withdrawal of water from the Kushiyara River, a modest but symbolically important step.

Candidates should retain the legal-diplomatic distinction: water-sharing operates bilaterally, outside any binding multilateral convention, because India is not a party to the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention. This leaves Bangladesh reliant on bilateral negotiation and the principle of equitable utilisation rather than enforceable international adjudication—a vulnerability examiners frequently probe.

The trade imbalance

India is Bangladesh's largest trading partner in the region and second-largest globally after China. Bilateral trade exceeded USD 14 billion in FY2022-23, but it is heavily skewed in India's favour—Bangladesh's exports to India hover around USD 2 billion against imports of roughly USD 12 billion. To narrow this, India extended duty-free, quota-free access to most Bangladeshi products (except a short tobacco and alcohol negative list) under the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) framework in 2011. The two countries have since launched negotiations toward a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), formally announced during Prime Minister Hasina's June 2022 visit, aimed at deepening market access ahead of Bangladesh's scheduled LDC graduation in 2026, after which it loses preferential tariff treatment.

Connectivity: corridors, rail and power

Connectivity is the relationship's brightest area. India extended three Lines of Credit totalling about USD 8 billion since 2010—the largest such commitment New Delhi has made to any country. Key projects include the Akhaura-Agartala cross-border rail link (inaugurated November 2023), the Maitree Setu bridge over the Feni River connecting Tripura to Chattogram port (2021), and revived rail routes such as the Maitree, Bandhan and Mitali Express services. Under the 2015 Coastal Shipping Agreement and transit protocols, India gained the right to move goods to its landlocked northeastern states through Chattogram and Mongla ports—addressing India's 'chicken's neck' Siliguri Corridor bottleneck while earning Bangladesh transit fees.

In the power sector, Bangladesh imports over 1,160 MW from India, and the controversial Adani Godda coal plant in Jharkhand was contracted to supply 1,496 MW under a 2017 agreement. The India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline for diesel from Numaligarh (Assam) to Parbatipur opened in March 2023.

Why this matters for the exam

For the BCS International Affairs paper, the India relationship is the single highest-yield bilateral topic, tested in both the written examination and the viva. Examiners expect precise recall of the 1996 Ganges Treaty (parties, year, Farakka, the 35,000-cusec guarantee), the Teesta stalemate and its federalism dimension, the Land Boundary Agreement ratified via India's 100th Constitutional Amendment in 2015, and the trade-deficit-versus-connectivity trade-off. PYQ angles typically demand a balanced essay: candidates must weigh genuine cooperation (LBA settlement, power, transit) against grievances (Teesta, trade deficit, border killings by India's Border Security Force). Avoid one-sided framing; the examiner rewards a calibrated, evidence-dated assessment of interdependence and asymmetry.